[4] Mabuchi Motor's head office is located near Matsuhidai station on the Hokuso line linking Narita airport with downtown Tokyo.
[2] As an elementary school student living in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture in the 1930s, Kenichi Mabuchi, the son of a tin plate factory owner, enjoyed inventing things such as a homemade washing machine, bamboo toy guns, helicopters, and a model boat that ran on alcohol (and which exploded and burned him when he switched out the alcohol for gasoline).
[22] In junior high school, Kenichi won the 5th Shikoku Model Airplane Tournament, beating his adult competition by crafting the plane with the longest flight duration.
[22] He gathered his friends and scoured the burned ruins for metal and copper wire to use in making simple DC motors as educational tools for use in elementary schools.
[22] Crafted from an alloy of iron, aluminum, and nickel, Takaichi's patented "alnico motor" proved more powerful than the one his older brother invented and just as easy to mass-produce.
[22] By August 1955, Japan Science and Industry Co., Ltd. was established[23] as a joint venture with a major toy manufacturer, and an automatic armature coil winding apparatus was developed, thereby expanding production capacity to 30,000 motors per day.
[22] Export operations began in September 1957 with the creation of Mabuchi Shoji Co., Ltd.[23] In the spring of 1958, Kenichi bought back his own company's shares and dissolved the joint venture with their toy producing customer.
[22] They increased the precision of the shaft and improved the commutator and brush, reducing noise and power consumption to 10% of the original F-type motor and axis deviation to less than 10 microns, and extending lifespan by 50–100 times to 1,000–2,000 hours.
[1] The Mabuchi brothers celebrated the tenth anniversary of Tokyo Science in late 1963 with a party at a restaurant in Akasaka, attended by over 1,000 company employees, as well as visitors from the toy industry, the financial sector, and the United States.
[1] In March 1965, Mabuchi moved its Japanese factory from a flood-prone area to a safe and large piece of land secured in Matsudo, Chiba (the current location of the corporate headquarters) just outside Tokyo.
[22] Because of this, the company had to hire extra seasonal workers every year before the holidays when the factories grew too busy and then discharge them when the period was over and production became slow.
[22] As far as Mabuchi Motor was concerned, the key part of a radio cassette deck was that it must be able to spin quietly and stably to produce quality sound.
[22] But one after another, brand name manufacturers chose the quality and price of the RF-510G, and the Mabuchi brothers helped bring affordable Japanese radio cassette decks, portable headphone stereo CD players, and numerous other products in the audio visual field, to consumers across the world.
[22] With their overwhelming product levels, the Mabuchi brothers secured a 90% share of the CD player business, spurring rival companies to surrender.
[24] Then, in April, the corporate headquarters were moved to Matsudo, near Matsuhidai Station, halfway between Narita International Airport and downtown Tokyo on the Hokuso Line.
[24] Then, in October, the first Chinese subsidiary company totally financed by Japanese enterprises, Mabuchi Motor Dalian Ltd., was established and the supply system for the world market was strengthened.
[24] Next, in April 1992, the Mabuchi Technology Center was completed in Motono in Chiba Prefecture, for in-depth research and development of small electric motors.
[24] In December 2001, Mabuchi Motor Company received the first Porter Prize awarded to corporations and businesses that have implemented superior strategies in innovation.
[24] Then, in 2002, Mabuchi Motor was selected by the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy as "Japan's 10 excellent corporations that have constructed a world-class business model".
[27] In 2006, Tetsuo Odajima, 63, pleaded guilty in Chiba District Court to killing the wife and daughter of the former Mabuchi Motor Co. chairman and two other people in three robbery-murder cases in 2002.
[24] A month later, Mabuchi Motor (Yingtan) Co., Ltd. was established with the aim of enhancing cost competitiveness by creating small and flexible production management.
[22] And so, while listening to an MP3 of Wagner he received as a present from his grandson and riding in a luxury car, Takaichi asked Shinji how progress was going in expanding the company's automobile electronic component field.
[22] Part of the profits earned through developing low cost motors is used to sponsor crafting workshops, model car events, and robot building competitions.
[24] December saw the release of an inner-rotor-type brushless motor, and Mabuchi entered the market of an application for driving all-in-one devices, each of which is capable of functioning as a copier/fax/printer.
[1] Its factories are located in China (Dalian, Dongguan, Jiangsu, Yingtan, Jiangxi and Wafangdian), Vietnam (Biên Hòa and Danang), and Taiwan (Hsinchu and Kaohsiung).
[31] Foreign interns have contributed to the company's research and development, quality assurance, sales contracts and antitrust compliance measures.
[33] To avoid these situations, improved motors are assembled with forward brush-shifting that offsets the armature reaction during load operation to keep them on neutral electrically.
[33] Mabuchi Motor identified global warming as a major issue and, therefore, committed to use resources more efficiently, reduce waste, and conduct environmentally friendly manufacturing operations, including green procurement.
[35] Mabuchi does not tolerate holding back funds required to implement safety measures in order to improve a plant's balance sheet.
[36] Third, the company educates local employees as leaders, regardless of their nationality, provides skill improvement training, and human resource development and benefit packages tailored to each region where Mabuchi operates.